The Brief

Orange County officials are taking control of services at the county’s signature mental health campus, a move that pushes out a nonprofit organization that was paid tens of millions of dollars in public funds to run it for the last two years.

The action terminates a three-year contract early and comes after a damning audit found the organization, Mind OC, failed to ensure proper staffing and effective outcomes of key services.

LAist obtained the audit, which has not been previously reported, through a public records request. It's the first audit of Mind OC’s management of the mental health campus — which began in October 2022. To date, the county has paid the nonprofit more than $38 million to manage services at the campus, according to county records.

Those services include substance abuse treatment and mental health crisis programs. The campus, located in the city of Orange, served some 3,500 people in fiscal year 2023-2024, according to data provided by the O.C. Health Care Agency.

The public-private effort was created pre-pandemic as county officials came under increasing pressure to deal with a very public homelessness emergency and high-profile incidents involving people experiencing mental health crises. The goal was to create mental health hubs where, regardless of your insurance status, people can find treatment.

The shift in operations at Be Well's Orange campus marks the second time the county has lost confidence in a contractor hired to execute their plan. The previous change in 2022 shut down substance abuse treatment services at the Orange campus for more than a year.

County officials say a change was needed

Veronica Kelley, director of the Orange County Health Care Agency, told LAist that the contract with Mind OC to run the campus will end Sept. 30. "What we don't want to do is continue down a road that we know is not going well," she said.

Kelley said that Mind OC did not meet its contract obligations to bring in funding from private insurance or other private revenue to help offset the cost of taxpayer-funded services. She also said it was costing the county twice as much to pay the nonprofit to run the campus as it would for the county to run it themselves.

"We have switched back to a model that we know works so that it is more efficient and that we can ensure directly that services are being provided in an effective and regulatory required manner," she said.

A spokesperson for Mind OC said the nonprofit has a meeting scheduled with county leaders on Wednesday and declined to make anyone available for an interview until after that meeting takes place. Their three-year contract to run the Orange campus had been set to run through next June.

Mind OC will continue in a more limited role at the Be Well campus in Orange, managing the physical property, according to a joint statement released Tuesday by Kelley and Mind OC CEO Phil Franks. Mind OC also has another lucrative county contract to run an even bigger mental health campus being built in Irvine.

The county health care agency intends to continue working with the onsite subcontractors, Exodus Recovery Inc. and HealthRIGHT 360, "to ensure continued high quality psychiatric crisis and substance use disorder services," according to the news release issued late Tuesday after questions from LAist.

Audit flags lack of training, questionable billing

An audit report from July and subsequent memo from Kelley to the O.C. Board of Supervisors notes 38 problems with Mind OC's management of Be Well’s Orange campus including concerns that lack of oversight could have led to “possible fraud.”

Kelley told LAist that the possibility of fraud was under investigation, and no conclusions had been reached.

Among the issues flagged in the audit:

• Inadequate staffing of crisis programs, which are run by subcontractor Exodus Recovery Inc. The audit notes "numerous occasions" of unanswered calls or instances where calls were rerouted to a call center in Los Angeles. 
• Duplicative billing for residential treatment claims by subcontractor HealthRight360. The audit also notes Mind OC's lack of "consistent and independent monitoring" of HealthRight360 to ensure appropriate billing.
• Failure to ensure subcontractor HealthRight360 provided appropriate services and procedures for treating substance use disorders. 
• No evidence that HealthRight360 employees completed the county's required annual trainings, including on substance withdrawal management. 
• No evidence that mental health providers at the campus followed up with clients after discharge to prevent relapses and link them to continued care.
• Failure to meet the goal of having 26% of the campus' services paid for via private insurance. Currently, according to the audit, revenue from private insurance makes up just 2.6% of the total, meaning public dollars are paying for the remainder.
• Failure to meet the goal, laid out in Mind OC's contract, to refer 95% of clients in the crisis residential program to a lower level of care. Only about half of these clients have been discharged to a lower level of care, according to the audit. 

In Kelley's memo to supervisors about the audit, dated Aug. 15, she wrote that she had taken a call earlier that day from Phillip Franks, Mind OC's CEO, who told her the subcontractor HealthRight360 "was 'not going to make it'” citing billing issues, poor staffing and poor quality of care.

"All of this should have been addressed and known about if [Mind OC] was fulfilling the requirements of the [contract]," Kelley wrote to the supervisors.

Kelley told LAist that following the audit’s findings in July, Mind OC submitted a corrective action plan to the county. She said the county was ending its contract with Mind OC for "convenience," not "for cause."

Vitka Eisen, CEO of HealthRIGHT 360, told LAist that she believed most of the problems flagged in the audit were the result of her organization having to work through Mind OC as an intermediary, instead of working directly with the county, as it does with other public agencies across the state.

"It's an extremely unusual relationship," she said of MindOC's role on the Be Well campus.

HealthRIGHT 360 began operating for the first time in O.C., on the Be Well campus, in December 2023. Eisen said, as a new provider in the county, they've had numerous questions about documentation and billing that would have been more easily answered by county health officials, but "we have to go to MindOC with questions," she said.

LAist reached out to Exodus Recovery Inc. by phone and will update this story if we hear back.

A homeless encampment in Santa Ana's Civic Center Plaza. The encampment was cleared in 2018 as a federal judge and others put pressure on the county to do more to help unhoused people.

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The backstory

Mind OC, which does business as Be Well OC, was launched in 2017 with the goal of creating several mental health hubs in Orange County funded through both public funds and private health insurance. The organization has had strong support from the O.C. Board of Supervisors, including Supervisor Andrew Do, who helped craft the concept in 2015 as a member of the board's ad hoc committee on mental health services.

Prior to the formation of Mind OC, county officials faced scrutiny from a federal judge for failing to provide adequate mental health services for unhoused people, and failing to fully spend mental health dollars in the county.

Mind OC, and the Be Well campus, which opened in Orange in 2021 as a public-private partnership, were meant to address those problems. Initially, Kelley said, the county ran the Orange campus, and Mind OC managed the property and security. Then, in October 2022, the county signed a contract with Mind OC to oversee all operations and subcontractors at the Be Well campus.

The following year, county health officials raised concerns about the campus' substance abuse treatment contractor Telecare Corp.

Shortly after those concerns were raised, the county shuttered Be Well's residential treatment program, run by Telecare, for more than a year until the county could find a new contractor.

HealthRIGHT 360 took over. The most recent audit from July found similar problems remain — for example, failing to provide required services and needed follow-up with clients after they're discharged.

This past June, the O.C. Board of Supervisors entered into another contract with Mind O.C. to build an even bigger mental health campus — 22 acres — in Irvine. The board approved $40 million in federal pandemic response money for the construction, and at least another $66 million has been provided through state and federal funds.

Kelley said the county's recent decision to cancel its contract with Mind OC only applies to its contract to manage Be Well's campus in Orange.

She also said the contract cancellation would not affect the separate contracts Mind OC has with O.C. cities to handle psychiatric and drug emergencies in lieu of armed police officers.

A volunteer with Wound Walk OC takes the vital signs of a man sleeping in an underpass in central Orange County.

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Responses to the audit and contract termination

Michael Sean Wright, who runs the street medicine group Wound Walk OC and was briefed on the audit and contract termination by LAist, said it showed county officials hadn’t learned from the past.

He pointed back to a 2022 audit that revealed problems with Telecare's operations on the Be Well campus.

"We gave an additional millions of millions of millions of dollars and allowed the same lack of oversight to continue. Mind OC stayed with the keys and the checks," Wright said.

He added that despite Be Well's original promise of expanded substance abuse treatment services in O.C., it's still difficult to find detox and substance abuse programs for people who want them, many of whom are unhoused.

"Time is of the essence," he said. "There is no place that will take you at night."

Supervisor Katrina Foley said the county's decision to take over management of the Be Well campus from Mind OC was part of the "trial and error" that has come along with the county’s efforts to get mental health care to anyone who needs it, regardless of insurance.

"If something isn't working, we have to be willing to pivot quickly in this dynamic environment," she said.

"Making sure that people are trained and in compliance with rules and regulations and systems … that is something that the county behavioral health staff can do maybe better than a private nonprofit," Foley said.

Foley said the county had made "tremendous progress" since the time, in 2016 and 2017, when large encampments clogged the courthouse plaza in Santa Ana and stretched for miles along the Santa Ana riverbed. At the time, many residents in those encampments said they had untreated substance abuse and other mental health problems.

Per a court settlement, the encampments were cleared in 2018 in exchange for the county and O.C. cities agreeing to build more shelters and permanent supportive housing, and agreeing to connect unhoused people with mental health treatment.

"I'm actually very proud of the work that our county staff have done to build out the system of care, but it's an evolving process," she said. "We want to get this right before we complete building the much bigger [Be Well] campus in Irvine," she said.

It’s been more than a year now since the Eaton Fire devastated Altadena, destroying more than 9,000 structures and killing 19 people.

A group of about a dozen fire survivors said they were excited to get back to something they’d been doing together for years: a weekly informal pickup soccer game at Loma Alta Park.

But what they found was a ballfield battle they weren’t expecting.

Getting through hard times 

On a recent sweltering Sunday at Loma Alta, the park was abuzz with life: kids playing on a large jungle gym and parents sitting and talking on the grass.

That afternoon, the park was just a bubble of normalcy. All around were the stark reminders of the fire that tore through Altadena — rows and rows of flattened and dusty lots, melted gates and charred trees.

About half of the dozen or so Altadenans who say they’ve been meeting here for the past eight years appeared from different corners of a large grass field at the park, empty save for a few signs that read: "This field is designated for baseball and softball only."

But this group of friends, including several dads, said since 2018, they’ve bonded playing soccer here.

The Loma Alta soccer crew From L-R: Bryce Nicholson; Graham Fortier; Mike Lazzareschi; Alan Matthew Ruiz; Patrick Connor; Nicole Casburn; Gareth Casburn; and Joel Zobrist

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“Finding these guys and this game is really what brought me into the Altadena community in a lot of ways,” said Graham Fortier.

“This is kind of my backyard. I came here with my son... They grew up here,” Patrick Connor recalled.

“It got me through a couple of hard times already, before the fire,” Mike Lazzareschi said.

All three and their families lost homes in the Eaton Fire.

Bryce Nicholson’s family’s home was spared. One of his children was just 2 months old when the family had to evacuate.

“There’s something kind of symbolic and hopeful about coming to your only park left and talking about where people are at with their rebuilds or what’s going on at the local school district,” he said. “Or just to make fart jokes.”

The group said they were excited to get back to their weekly tradition last summer, months after the fire was extinguished. But in December, they said an L.A. County sheriff’s deputy told them they couldn’t play soccer on the field anymore.

They were shocked.

‘I think it’s ridiculous’ 

Fortier said they feel like the goal posts have been moving on them as far as justification from L.A. County staffers goes. They said officials cited reasons including grass mutilation, needing a permit and that the use is ultimately up to the park director’s discretion.

“To tell us that we can’t play a game that we’ve been playing in eight years at our park — our only park that didn’t burn down — I think it’s ridiculous. And I’m gonna keep playing until they kick me off,” Fortier told LAist.

In a statement, L.A. County Parks said designated baseball fields are for the “exclusive use of baseball, softball, and youth sports. They are not soccer fields.”

In “the near future” the county said it will be able to offer a multi-use field at the nearby Charles White Park, where a variety of sports, including soccer, will be allowed.

“Our goal is not exclusion — it is stewardship and safety. We remain committed to working with all park users to ensure safe, fair, and sustainable access for everyone in our communities,” the statement added.

Joshua McGuffie, a longtime member of the soccer crew who grew up in Altadena and saw his parents’ home destroyed in the fire, said the county’s previous requests to obtain a permit and to stop playing with cleats were inappropriate.

“It feels like the county parks coming in and saying, like, ‘Look, A, You need to pay and, B, you need to play unsafely.’ It’s just mystifying to me,” McGuffie said.

He and other players feel the insurance and other costs associated with getting a permit are prohibitive and their informal group of far fewer than 25 players shouldn’t be required to do so.

The group said they have a meeting with Supervisor Kathryn Barger’s office next week to discuss their situation.

In the meantime, they’ve circulated an online petition that has over 1,100 signatures.

Healing through sports

Patrick Connor said it’s painful to be turned away. And he said he feels like it’s intervening in his healing, his recovery from the fire.

“People ask me: ‘How are you doing?’ I’m not doing that great,” Connor said. “I had, like, serious insomnia after the fire... And the thing that was really good for me was exercise and being with fire victims.”

Several in the soccer group were cited by an L.A. County sheriff's deputy on Sunday, March 15.

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Later that afternoon at Loma Alta, Bryce Nicholson said he and several others in the group were cited by the sheriff’s department for playing soccer on the field.

Nicholson said he’s digging his heels in because he wants a better explanation from the county.

“Because this is a good space for people that don’t often have many spaces, and a community that has been through so much,” Nicholson said. “Why can’t they just meet up at a park and play a game like they have for a long time?”

When someone goes through a mental health crisis, their loved ones are thrown into a maze of urgent, high-stakes decisions.

Where to get care? How to deal with insurance? When to call 911?

For those in L.A.’s large Chinese immigrant community with limited English, helping a loved one can be especially challenging and isolating.

Starting Monday, a new Mandarin-language family support group in the San Gabriel Valley aims to provide a much-needed resource, coordinated by the National Alliance on Mental Illness in L.A. County.

Monthly meetings will be at the Holiday Inn in El Monte, held at night to accommodate people’s work schedules, and open to anyone from the region.

“For recent immigrants, but also even long-term residents who just aren't comfortable communicating in English the way they are in their native language, it just made such sense for us to do it,” said Richard Tom, president of the San Gabriel Valley chapter of NAMI.

Years in the making, the support group happens to be rolling out at a time of heightened anxiety for immigrant communities amid the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. Tom said providing support in Mandarin could help lower barriers for those who might hesitate to seek help.

“Obviously, right now, with immigration an issue, there is also a sensitivity to access in-language for folks who might otherwise be frightened of going to places where they're going to perhaps be misunderstood,” he said.

Removing stigma

Tom said the support group not only removes the language hurdles but also recognizes the cultural stigma many participants may be navigating.

“There’s sort of what you expect in a lot of cultures, which is sort of an embarrassment and shame associated with having someone who has a mental health issue,” Tom said.

Organizers say that despite L.A.’s large Chinese-speaking population, no consistent, in-language family support group has existed locally in recent years.

Seven locals were trained by a Bay Area facilitator Elaine Peng to lead a Chinese-language support group in the San Gabriel Valley.

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NAMI San Gabriel Valley

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One of the biggest obstacles has been finding Chinese-speaking family members and friends able to go through the two-day-long facilitator training and commit to leading the support group indefinitely — all the while caring for someone struggling with mental illness.

At the same time, the concept of peer support — turning to others with lived experience rather than professionals — is still unfamiliar in many Chinese immigrant communities, said Nancy Eng, a NAMI SGV board member.

But, “one of the reasons that the support group is so great is it gives a visual and also the sense when you're together in the room, the headaches that you’re dealing with — the exhaustion, the frustration — you're not alone,” Eng said.

Trying your best

The Chinese-language program is launching with seven facilitators, all of whom have personal experience supporting a loved one with mental illness.

Support groups can normalize the idea of seeking professional help, coordinators say, acting as a bridge to therapists or psychiatrists for both the person experiencing crisis, as well as for their loved ones.

Fellow members can also share their experiences with painful decisions such as seeking involuntary treatment or watching a loved one enter the criminal justice system.

In a support group, Tom said, families hear something they rarely hear elsewhere: that they are doing the best they can.

“There’s an element of validation that is very powerful for people,” he said.

Mary YanYan Chan, who is coordinating the Chinese language program, said her own experience in a support group has helped her deal with a sister with untreated bipolar disorder.

“I'm just kind of following the steps, and in the interim, I'm going to help others behind me, to bring them forward, because this is really community work,” Chan said.

A grant from Cedars-Sinai is helping to support the initial rollout through the summer. But organizers say its future will depend on participation and securing a long-term space, hopefully with a community organization.

Details

When: Mondays on a monthly basis, from 6:30 to 8 p.m.
Where: Holiday Inn, 9920 Valley Blvd., 1st floor, El Monte
Info: mchan@namiglac.org

Organizers behind the No Kings protests are forecasting their biggest showing yet on Saturday against the policies of President Trump, energized by issues including the administration's immigration enforcement tactics and the war in Iran.

"March 28 will be the biggest protest in US history," the group, which comprises a progressive coalition of activists, wrote on its website. "Find your local No Kings event to make it clear that America rejects the regime's brutality at home and abroad."

Organizers have planned more than 3,000 events in cities across the United States, with several more planned abroad, including in Mexico and Canada.

This is the third series of nationwide protests organized by the group, which says Trump's actions in office are more akin to those of a monarch than a democratically-elected leader.

In response to a request for comment about the planned protests, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson dismissed them as "Trump Derangement Therapy Sessions" and listed what she said were some of the campaign's g "major leftist" financial backers.

"The only people who care about these Trump Derangement Therapy Sessions are the reporters who are paid to cover them, said White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson.

The last round of protests, this past October, saw some 5 million attendees spread across about 2,600 demonstrations in the country, according to No Kings.

Bill McKibben is the Vermont-based founder of Third Act — a No Kings-affiliated group comprising people who are 60 years old and up.

He says intergenerational solidarity is a key part of the movement and that there are many older people willing to take to the streets alongside their younger compatriots.

"If you've been to any of the No Kings protests that have happened so far, you'll see a lot of people with hairlines like mine, which is to say, scant," he joked.

"People of all kinds are outraged by what's happening in the country right now, but older people have a particular role to play here."

He says that for older Americans, who have lived through several presidencies, describe the current one as the closest the country has come to authoritarian rule.

"This is a very weird moment in our political history," he said. "Look, there have been plenty of presidents in my lifetime I didn't much like or didn't agree with politically, but there's never been any that I thought were fascist, and I think that that's very clear what we're now starting to deal with in this country."

President Trump has said repeatedly that he's not a fascist or a king and has previously scorned the protests.

"I think it's a joke," he said last year of the October demonstrations. "I looked at the people. They're not representative of this country."

He simultaneously leaned into the royal comparisons, even while mocking critics, posting an AI-generated video of himself wearing a crown.

Visibility Brigade leader Dana Glazer, who is based in the New Jersey suburbs, similarly likened Trump's politics to fascism, which he said thrives when people are isolated from their communities.

Coming together in protest, he said, helps combat that social seclusion. Glazer and other members of his group plan to protest Saturday in Paramus, where the organization was founded.

"We are a force of treating people with individual human dignity and respect, and connection," he said. "And that's what brings us together. That's why this kind of event is powerful, is that people suddenly go, 'Oh wow, we have some power.' "

He said he hopes that people will see events like No Kings and be inspired to peacefully protest even when there aren't huge events planned.

"The reason why we're in this mess is because there has been a lack of civic engagement overall because people have been trained that just by nature of voting every two to four years that they're doing their civic duty," he said.

"We're obviously in a state of crisis right now, but we're in that state of crisis because of this."
Copyright 2026 NPR

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

Imagine MacArthur Park without a road running through the middle. That’s what most residents who live around the park say they want.

This is according to preliminary findings from the Reconnecting MacArthur Park project, an effort studying whether the busy roadway between Alvarado Street and Carondelet Street should be closed off permanently. Under this proposal, the park’s north and south sides would be rejoined to form one large green space.

The idea is to turn the major traffic corridor into usable park space in one of the most densely populated neighborhoods in Los Angeles.

Maria Ortiz, 59, who has lived near MacArthur Park for 30 years, welcomes closing off Wilshire, if it improves the area for families like hers. She is a grandmother to three granddaughters.

“Hopefully they can close it so there’s more space for kids to play, more surveillance and fewer homeless people,” Ortiz said. “Right now, the traffic is also bad, it gets really congested. People also don’t respect when the buses are coming.”

For her, the park is important because it’s the only one she has close by. But she added that changes should go beyond closing the road. 

She remembers a different MacArthur Park when she was raising her children, one that felt more welcoming for families.

“There were a lot more events at MacArthur Park before, there were contests, they would give gifts to kids,” she said. 

She joined her neighbors to participate in a public forum to explore the proposal.

The Central City Neighborhood Partners surveyed more than 1,500 people from August to December and asked them to weigh in on five possible options:

• Remove Wilshire entirely through the park and expand green space
  
• Remove Wilshire entirely and keep the short block between Park View Street and Carondelet Street open to cars
  
• Close Wilshire to all cars and turn it into a public space
  
• Close Wilshire only on weekends
  
• Allow only buses through Wilshire Boulevard

More than six in 10 survey respondents supported removing Wilshire and reconnecting the park. Keeping things as they are drew the least support.

The project now moves into the next phase, where the five concepts will go through an environmental review. The city and project partners will also develop design concepts and estimate costs to build.

At this juncture, there is no available funding for any construction.

“What we’ve been able to hear from the community was really that everyone wants to see a change in MacArthur Park,” said Diana Alfaro, associate executive director of Central City Neighborhood Partners. 

“Everyone in this community is excited or wants to be able to see new amenities,” she said, including better lighting and park infrastructure. 

In a February interview, Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez said the neighborhood doesn’t have enough parks or green space, adding that MacArthur Park alone isn’t enough for a densely populated neighborhood like Westlake.

“And that’s why I’ve been moving with my team and pushing for reconnecting MacArthur Park and closing down Wilshire Boulevard in that area to begin to create more spaces, more pedestrianized spaces, more opportunities for green space,” she said. 

At the same time, the city is moving forward with a separate plan to install fencing around MacArthur Park. The plan would add a wrought-iron fence around both halves of the park.  

Officials say the fence will allow the park to close at night and give them time to clean the space overnight. Their goal is to address safety and quality-of-life concerns.

That fencing project is not part of the reconnection study, but Alfaro said it will affect it. According to a report of the survey findings, any redesign of the park will have to factor in where the fence goes, and whether parts of it would need to be removed or rebuilt if the park is eventually reconnected.

City officials have not decided which option, if any, will move forward.

“At the end of the day, there are a lot of changes coming to MacArthur Park,” Alfaro said, “and I think it testifies why there needs to be some more attention around reconnecting or really just adding more green space for the community.”

Alex Lacayo, 35, supports closing Wilshire if it helps improve conditions at the park.

The lifelong Westlake resident often feels the park is “dirty and filthy” when he passes through. 

“If there’s a way to make the park a better place for more people to come, then I feel like it’s a good project,” Lacayo said. “We get a lot of tourists, so improving the park I think will improve the image of Los Angeles.” 

Because of ongoing concerns around homelessness and drug activity, Lacayo often avoids walking through the park. But if conditions improve, he said that could change and he would visit more often.

Alfaro believes the fencing plan and the reconnection project are both responses to those same concerns.

“The purpose of it is to ensure that the park is being well kept and maintained,” she said of the fence.

“I think all of it kind of adds to the same reason why we are doing this project to begin with,” Alfaro added. “Which is to ensure that the park itself is a park that families could use, youth can use, seniors can use.”